My Biggest Homeschool Mistake

My Biggest Homeschool Mistake

When I started homeschooling I had so many ideas. I wanted to go on so many adventures with my kids. The future was filled with so much promise. I never knew I was about to make the biggest homeschool mistake I could’ve ever made.

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The feeling of adventure and promise quickly turned to a feeling of sinking overwhelm. I felt so defeated, I was drowning in a mess of my own making.

Instead of keeping my eyes on what should’ve been the focus for my family’s homeschool journey, I was looking around at all the things other homeschoolers were doing and I wanted to do it all too. Only, I didn’t have the experience to homeschool three children, take care of a toddler, run a business, and manage our home.

The biggest homeschool mistake I could’ve ever made…

The biggest homeschool mistake I could’ve ever made was to think that I had to do all the subjects the kids were doing in public school. I single-handedly destroyed our homeschool by, not only overwhelming myself but overwhelming the kids as well.

When I felt the overwhelm setting in, I should’ve backed off, but I didn’t, I kept pushing us until we were all in homeschool hell.

By the end of that school year, I’d decided my children would have to go back to public school. And they did just that the following year.

Six months into that school year, we began having bullying problems at the school and with a teacher allowing it to happen. I withdrew my child and homeschooled her, and only her, for the remainder of the school year. Before the end of the school year, I was entertaining the idea of homeschooling everyone else again.

I decided to try again before the next school year began, and the next fall all my children began homeschool again.

This time I knew better. We took homeschooling much slower. We still worked on our basic subjects but switched it up and worked on them different days of the week. Documentaries from the History Channel and YouTube videos kept things mixed up a bit.

My children were still learning, but we didn’t take our subjects as seriously.

I learn from my mistakes frequently. I’m still learning as I go, every homeschool year I learn something I didn’t know before. There are things I’ve learned right alongside my kids and we were both amazed. You see, when you begin a homeschooling journey it’s not just about what the kids learn. It’s about what you learn too.

Most importantly, I’m learning more about each one of my kids that I never would’ve seen if I hadn’t given homeschooling a second chance.